Looking Good Dead

tell them, and I can see they are looking at me strangely, as if they’re wondering, How much longer can he keep up these lies about Sandy? ’
    ‘That’s terrible,’ Cleo said.
    Grace stared at the cluster of gleaming bracelets around Cleo’s wrist, thinking what great taste she had in everything. ‘She was theironly child; their lives have been destroyed by her disappearance. I’ve seen it in other situations, from work. People need something to cling to, something to focus their emotions on.’ He took another drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray beside the price tag of his jacket. ‘So, enough about me. I want to know about you. Tell me about the other Cleo Morey.’
    ‘The other Cleo Morey?’
    ‘The one you change into when you clock off from the mortuary.’
    ‘Not yet,’ she teased. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet, not by a long way.’
    He saw she had finished her drink also, and hailed the waiter, ordering another for each of them. Then he turned to Cleo. ‘I’m sorry, it’s your turn to answer a question.’
    She pulled a face, which made him grin. ‘I want to know,’ he said, ‘why the most beautiful woman in the world is working in a mortuary, doing the most horrible job in the world.’
    ‘I was a nurse – I did a degree at Southampton University. I wasn’t a very good nurse. I don’t know – maybe I didn’t have the patience. Then I spent a couple of weeks working in the mortuary at the local hospital and I just found – I don’t know how to describe it – I just felt that – it was the first place I had been to in my life where I could make a difference. Have you ever read the writings of Chaung Tse?’
    ‘I’m just a dumb copper from the backstreets of Brighton. I never got to read anything fancy. Who he?’
    ‘A Chinese Taoist philosopher.’
    ‘Of course. Silly me for not knowing.’
    She dug her fingers into the ice at the bottom of her glass, then flicked a droplet of water at him. ‘Stop being horrid!’
    He flinched as it struck his forehead. ‘I’m not being horrid.’
    ‘You are!’
    ‘Tell me what this Chaung Tse geezer said!’
    ‘He said, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.”’
    ‘So you turn corpses into butterflies?’
    ‘I wish.’
    They were the last to leave the restaurant. Grace was so engrossed in Cleo – and so drunk – he hadn’t noticed that the last customers had left a good half an hour before, and the staff were waiting patiently to close up.
    Cleo made a grab for the bill, but he snatched it off the plate, adamant.
    ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the next one.’
    ‘Deal,’ he said, tossing his card down, hoping he still had some credit on it. A few minutes later they staggered out into the blustery wind, and he held the door of the waiting cab for her, then climbed in, his head spinning.
    He’d lost count of how much they had drunk. Two bottles of wine, then sambucas. Then more sambucas. And they’d had several drinks to start. He slid an arm over the seat, and Cleo nestled comfortably against him. ‘Ish been good,’ he slurred. ‘Like I shmean, really––’
    Then her mouth was pressed against his. Her lips felt soft, so, so incredibly soft. He felt her tongue hungrily against his. It seemed just seconds later the taxi pulled up outside her flat, in the fashionable North Laines district in the centre of the city. Through the haze of alcohol he recognized the block, a recent conversion of an old industrial building. There had been a lot of publicity about it.
    He asked the cab to wait while he got out and walked with her to the entrance gates, unsure suddenly when they got there, of the protocol. Then their mouths found each other again. He held her tight, a little unsteady on his feet, running his hands through her long, silky hair, breathing in her perfume, totally intoxicated by the night, by her scents, by her softness and warmth.
    It seemed just moments later when he awoke with a start in the back of the cab, alone, to the beep of an incoming text. Shit , he thought. Work.
    He fumbled with the keys to read the text. It was from Cleo. It read simply, X .

40
    Kellie was quiet, the orange street lights strobing on her face as Tom drove the Audi down the London road back towards Brighton. The radio was turned down low; he could just hear the Louis Armstrong song ‘We Have All the Time in the World’, which always stirred him. He turned it up a